Main menu

Post navigation

Pointless Parables

I like some of the parables in the New Testament. The parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, for example, give good examples of the right path and add to the moral vocabulary of the West.

Lately, however, I’ve come across a few modern apologetic parables that fall far short of those in the Bible. Let me start with “The Blind Faith of Atheism” a tediously long story making a very small point. (I’ve abbreviated all the parables here. You’re welcome!)

An atheist professor was harassing his Christian students about their God belief, so they challenge him to a debate. The arrogant professor agrees, thinking he could shut down this God thing once and for all.

The atheist’s opening remark likens God belief to Santa Claus belief. We give up one when we grow up; why not both?

The Christian then goes through a long process of arguing that the atheist doesn’t know everything, to which the atheist agrees. And now he releases the snare: isn’t it possible that evidence of God could exist in that huge fraction of all knowledge that the atheist doesn’t understand? “Have you been to South Yemen?” the Christian asks. “Maybe God is in South Yemen.”

The debate isn’t going his way, so the atheist complains that the debate isn’t fair.

The Christian pushes his point and gets the atheist, now meek and whiney, to admit that the claim “There is no God” is indefensible and that the atheist’s claim is actually a faith position. A little more back and forth, and the atheist slinks away, publicly humiliated.

This is rather like the Chick tract in which the nasty Biology professor gets shredded and then converted by a calm and polite Christian.

In the first place, very few atheists are certain that there is no God. They would say instead that they have no God belief, just like the Christian has no Poseidon belief.

Second, “there is no God” is a faith position just like “there are no unicorns” is—that is, not at all. Could unicorns exist? It’s possible, but the evidence strongly argues that they don’t. We don’t have faith that unicorns don’t exist; we trust that they don’t because we have evidence that they don’t. In the same way, belief in God is a faith position, but following the facts where they point (and tentatively concluding that God is in the same bin as Zeus, Shiva, and the other gods from history) is a trust position.

As the barber trims the man’s hair, he says that he doesn’t believe in God. He points to the problem of evil—why would there be so much pain and suffering in the world if God existed?

Wanting to avoid antagonizing the man who had his coiffure in his hands, the Christian customer doesn’t engage in the argument, but after leaving the shop, he sees a man with a scruffy beard and long unkempt hair. He returns to the barber shop and says, “I just realized something—barbers don’t exist either.”

“But I just cut your hair!” the barber replies.

“If barbers existed, there would be no one with long hair, like the man I just saw.”

“Don’t blame me if they don’t come to me.”

“Exactly!” the Christian replies. “And we can’t blame God if we don’t go to him. He exists; the problem with pain and suffering is that people don’t seek God.”

Huh? But Christians do go to God. How does that help the pain and suffering in the world? How does that remove pain and suffering from just the lives of Christians? How does that undo the damage from tornadoes or tsunamis? Praying to a God, even one who’s not there, can bring comfort, I’ll admit, but that’s hardly what the Christian in this story is claiming.

Finally, a well-made video from the Macedonian Ministry of Education and Science.

The video opens with a schoolboy running into school. The time period looks to be about 1900.

The teacher at the front of the room speaks in German, with English subtitles. He declares that if God exists then he is evil. If he created everything, then he created evil, right?

“No, sir. Darkness doesn’t exist. It is merely the absence of light. In the same way, evil doesn’t exist. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love in his heart.”

At the end, we see the name of this precocious schoolboy: Albert Einstein. We’re left with the tagline: “Religion is knowledge too. Bring religion back to school.”

With a tagline like that on a government video, I guess there’s not much separation of church and state here. And a Macedonian ministry puts together a German video with English subtitles? Why not Macedonian subtitles? What possible goal of theirs could this serve?

Putting aside this mystery, this isn’t an honest portrayal of Einstein’s religious beliefs, at least not in his later life. And we can quibble about whether evil is something or the absence of something, but the final statement (that evil is the result of not having God’s love) is simply an assertion without evidence. Unconvincing.

7 thoughts on “Pointless Parables”

Atheism is a position based on there is no evidence of a God. But a lack of a belief is not a position. So how can Athesism mean I lack a belief?
A lack of belief can not be the definition of Athesism. Because Atheism is a position.

ATHEISTS ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER RECOGNIZED THE POWER OF GOD IN THEIR LIVES. A BELIEVER IS MORE SELFLESS AND APPRECIATIVE OF THE HELP THAT THE HAND OF GOD GIVES US IN VARYING CONDITIONS. WE RECOGNIZE THAT WE CANNOT HANDLE LIFE ON OUR OWN WITHOUT GOD’S INTERVENTION. WE’VE HAD PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH HIM. HE IS NOT JUST A SUBJECT TO US.

By “God” I assume you mean the Christian god? Most people in the world haven’t recognized the power of the Christian god in their lives, otherwise they’d be Christians.

Yes, you’re right that believers appreciate God’s help because they’re they only ones who imagine that they see it. That doesn’t mean that God actually exists. All the other gods are fiction, aren’t they? Why imagine that the Christian god is any different?

The mind is a tricky thing. The “personal experiences” that you imagine may be just that–imaginings. We agree that they are in the other guy’s religion; why is Christianity exempt?